Sound - during cutscenes and logos

[matt4446]

the sound keeps cutting out for small random delays during cutscenes, which also occurs in rise of legends and darkstar one demo - during the cutscenes. Was wondering if anyone is able to help out.

BTW, have got rid of the problem before, cant remember how or if it were a fluke for the last few days, but when i installed civ4 again it returned to the 3 second or so with sound then cut & repeat.

audio in game - all games are fine.

This is only occuring in windows x64 atm, fine in win x86

ASUS A8N-SLI
sound card: creative x-fi


Thanks, Matt

 

[ronnybiggs]

I'm getting the problem with sound myself - at least in the cut scenes. Well, the patches fixed the sound but now the video lags. It's like they made sure the sound plays consistently, so the video lags behind the sound and then skips forward to catch up.

I think it's an issue with a Windows Update. It used to play fine until Windows did an auto update. I don't know what it is but I imagine it's something you can disable.

 

[matt4446]

unfortunatly an update(s) to games havnt effected my problem. Ive tried to re-install the codecs which are originally packed with the OS but using windows\system32\mmdriver.infcomes with "The specified location does not contain a compatible software driver for your device. If the location contains a driver, make sure it is designed to work with Windows for x64-based systems."

opening the intros.bik file with RAD Video Tools (featuring Bink 1.8L and Smacker 4.2c) the sound will still flicker so i believe its either a problem with my directx or codec(s). ruling out my sound cards as both onboard and the x-fi are experiancing the same thing and both work fine in other OS's, apart for no linux drivers for the x-fi

Well im going to play with the codecs some more, fail that attack directx, fail that - have a beer, switch back to the backup windows(x86).

Might be something microsoft's update did, but more likely something i did at some point.

Well i'll see what i can find and stop this annoyance, good luck to you to ronnybiggs. Oh btw have a look at http://www.radgametools.com/binkfaq.htm try the first step if your video is skipping & if its an AMD processor your using.

 

[matt4446]

converting it to AVI (DIVX (Intro.bik)) has no problems for me either. Oh i would be so happy if the game companys would use DivX more often.

 

[matt4446]

Well mine now works, looks like its to do with Cool and Quiet (well in xp x64 as i can see)

my boot ini changed to:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer


going to try removing Cool and Quiet see if it has the same effect.

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;895980 (Last Review : August 26, 2005) yet the issue was fixed for windows x86 with SP2 - odd.

 

[matt4446]

Well either disabling "Cool and Quiet" or adding "/usepmtimer" to the end of boot.ini seemed to work for me.

That'll make me happy for a while.

If you have simular problems it cant hurt to try changing the options.

Matt

 

[ronnybiggs]

Yeah I have a Pentium 4, 2 GHz, which is what's frustrating me. There shouldn't be anything that's below specs.

I'll try playing around with the settings when I get home.

 

[ronnybiggs]

What's with the "Cool and Quiet" setting? Is that an option for standard 32-bit WinXP? I don't see anything for it on the Bink link, if that's where I'm supposed to look.

I'm also not familiar with converting these files to AVI. Is this what matt4446 did, and if so, can I get some more details?

 

[crunch]

Quoting web:
AMD's Cool'n'Quiet™ technology is an innovative solution available on AMD Athlon™ 64 processor-based systems that can effectively lower the power consumption and enable a quieter-running system while delivering performance-on-demand, for the ultimate computing experience.

Basically, the CPU uses less electricity when it is not 100 % busy. In Matt's case it seems that turning this feature off (i.e., making the CPU run at full power all the time) helped him.

Unless you manage to find some magic option to view the videos properly, I propose that you download a standalone bink video player and watch the nice videos.... but play civ with movies disabled.

 

[ronnybiggs]

Dammit I want to watch the videos as part of the game. The wonder videos are fine - it's just the fullscreens that lag. I'd even consier buying a new graphics card if I knew that would solve the problem.